‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, most merciful Liberator, who hast so often freed thy people from their straits, free us too from this Babylonian Captivity of Antichrist, from his hypocrisy, his tyranny, his idolatry! Amen.’
The concluding part of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ is an address to Melanchthon and his colleagues on the Mystery of the Trinity and the discipline of the ancient Church. We have seen that Melanchthon of all the Reformers was the one who seemed to be most taken by the theological speculations of the seven books on Trinitarian error. ‘I read Servetus a great deal,’ says he to his friend Camerarius; and if he found the work objectionable in many respects, as he says, it yet contained matter that would not be put aside, but that forced itself on his attention, and may be presumed to have influenced his final conclusions on some of the highest and most difficult doctrines of orthodox Christianity. Certain it is that the first and earlier editions of his highly popular work, the ‘Loci Theologici,’ differ notably from those that appeared subsequently to the publication of Servetus’s ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis.’ In the first and earlier editions there is nothing said of God, whether as One or Triune, of Creation, the Incarnation, and other purely speculative matters. ‘These subjects,’ he says, ‘are wholly incomprehensible, and we more properly adore than attempt to investigate the mystery of Deity. What, I ask you,’ he continues, ‘has been the outcome of the scholastic and theological discussions that have gone on for all these ages?’ But the metaphysics of Christianity were not passed over in any such way by Servetus. His earliest work even meets us in some sort as a complementary criticism of the ‘Loci’ of Melanchthon, and that it was so held by the Reformer seems to be demonstrated by the many changes and additions to be noticed in the revised edition of the work of the year 1535, the first that was published after the appearance of the ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis’ and ‘Dialogi duo de Trinitate.’[62]
Finding himself very freely handled in the revised editions of the ‘Loci,’ his errors, as they are designated as matter of course, being assimilated to those of Paul of Samosata and others, and his references to Tertullian and the ante-Nicæan Fathers proclaimed irrelevant, Servetus retorts, and, throwing moderation to the winds, proceeds in the diatribe we have before us to pour out the vials of his displeasure on the head of the great Wittemberg scholar and theologian. Our Restorer of Christianity does, it is true, see Melanchthon as somewhat nearer the mark than Luther, Calvin, and Œcolampadius; but the references made to Athanasius, Augustin, and the Fathers who came after the Council of Nicæa, are all put out of court—their conclusions are of non-avail; for they had all bowed the knee to the Beast, and bore his mark. The true Church of Christ had already forsaken the earth in their day, and their teaching on the Trinity, Baptism, the Supper, &c., was nought. Strange to say, as proceeding from a scholar, himself no indifferent master of the Latin tongue, he reproaches Melanchthon with the elegance of his Latinity. The Holy Ghost, says he, never spoke in fine phrases! (P. 674.)
It is difficult to conceive a man not utterly bereft of reason and common sense, living among Roman Catholics and in times of deadly persecution for heresy, writing in the style of Servetus on the Papacy and the most accredited tenets of Christianity. Yet is it impossible to imagine that he was blind to the danger he incurred in doing so; neither do we believe that he knowingly and advisedly staked his life against the cause he certainly had so much at heart. He may have said, indeed, that he believed he should die for his opinions; but we see him taking what he must have meant as sufficient precautions against such a contingency; and when first brought face to face with the prospect of accomplishing the destiny he foreshadowed, we find him showing anything but the recklessness of the true martyr. We presume that the security in which he had dwelt so long under his assumed name, the immunity from suspicion of heresy he had enjoyed since the publication of his first work, and the latitude allowed him by his clerical friends of Vienne in discussing the heresies of the Reformers—and it may be also some of a minor sort of their own—misled him. His seven books on erroneous conceptions of the Trinity appear to have been little, if at all, known to the ecclesiastics of France; and he probably imagined that in appealing to the press again and keeping his work from the booksellers’ shops of the country of his adoption, he would continue to be overlooked. Anything of a heretical nature he should publish now might possibly be challenged by the German and Swiss Reformers; but they were heretics in the eyes of the Viennese, and, provided he did not openly proclaim himself the author, their ill report, if perchance it ever reached France, would do the author of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ no harm, if it did not even tend to exalt him among orthodox adherents of the Church of Rome.
Every reasonable precaution therefore taken that the new book on the Restoration of Christianity should not get abroad in France, Servetus seems to have thought himself safe against detection and pursuit. He was in fact altogether unknown, as we have said, in the place of his residence as Michael Serveto, alias Revés, of Aragon, in Spain. He was M. Michel Villeneuve, Physician of Vienne, and living under the patronage of its Archbishop. There was, however, so strong a family likeness between the ‘Seven Books and Two Dialogues on Trinitarian Error’ and the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ or the views therein contained, that the most cursory comparison of the two works would have disclosed their common parentage, even if the writer of the ‘Restoration’ had not himself hinted plainly enough at the fact. He must have thought himself perfectly safe in his incognito at Vienne, and seems not to have dreamt of danger from abroad. There could be no reason, therefore, why Calvin, and through him the other Reformers of Switzerland, should not be made aware of what he had been about. He would in truth take his place beside or above them all as the real Restorer of Christianity, proclaimer, as he believed himself to be, of the true doctrine concerning Christ as the naturally begotten Son of God; of the Salvation to be secured by faith in him as such; of the Regeneration to be effected by baptism performed in years of discretion, and of the absurdity implied in imagining division in the essence of God, and instead of the One great Creator of heaven and earth, having a Three-headed chimæra for a Deity! In this view, as we conclude, he sent a copy of his book to Calvin; and with consequences which it will now be our business to follow to their disastrous conclusion; for all that remains of the life of Michael Servetus, cut short in the flower of his age, is entirely subordinated to influences brought to bear on it through the printing of this work and the interference of the Reformer of Geneva.[63]
CHAPTER XVIII.
CALVIN RECEIVES A COPY OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO.’
Frelon, the publisher of Lyons, whom we already know as the medium of communication between Villeneuve and Calvin in their correspondence, was probably by this time in the secret of the Spaniard. The friend of Calvin as well as intimate with Villeneuve, had he not already been confided in by the subject of our study, he must have been informed by Calvin who Michel Villeneuve really was. The correspondence had long ceased, but the intercourse between the Bookseller and the Reformer continued, and the ‘monthly parcel’ was still the vehicle for new books and literary gossip between Lyons and Geneva. By Frelon’s February dispatch of the year 1553, we therefore conclude that there went a copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ hot from the press, specially addressed to Monsieur Jehann Calvin, Minister of Geneva. That it was accompanied by a letter from Frelon we may also presume, giving in all innocency and confidence—little recking what use would be made of the information—those particulars connected with the printing of the work which Frelon must have had from Villeneuve, and which Calvin by and by imparted to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne.
Frelon may be supposed not yet to have read the ‘Christianismi Restitutio;’ but aware of Villeneuve’s appreciation of the Church of Rome, and trusting to the author’s own account of his work as especially hostile to the papacy, he may have thought that it would not be otherwise than well received by Calvin. It is only with Frelon as go-between that we can account for the book having reached Calvin at the early date it did, and for the particular information he possessed concerning Arnoullet as the printer, and the precautions that had been taken to keep the world ignorant of what had been done. That there was no intention of betraying trust on Frelon’s part, we need not doubt; and still less, as we believe, need we question the fact that it was not only with the author’s consent, but by his express desire, that the first copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ sent abroad went to the Reformer.